It’s Breezy Oak, NOT Breezy OakS :)

How we got our name…

When we purchased our first Florida villa, we of course needed to come up with a name for it, and we did: Breezy Oak Villa. There are a number of reasons why we chose that particular name, many which I can’t share with you here; but if you stay with us at Breezy Oak Villa, it will become obvious! So let’s leave it at that.

One of the challenges with the name however is that guests often simply refer to the villa as ‘Breezy OakS’ or ‘Breezy OakS Villa’. That’s wrong, and it does drive me crazy, but I never correct a guest on it. There is little point in that, but if guests constantly get it wrong, it’s reasonable to ask “why did I ‘misname’ it” something that guests would naturally get wrong? Isn’t that my mistake?

Actually no, it was very much done on purpose.

First of all, ‘Breezy Oaks’ sounds like an old folks home, and I really didn’t want to make the villa sound like a something stead or stuffy, but the Breezy Oak moniker was important to us, and dropping the S helped separate it from the more common name people are used to hearing all the time.

Second, Breezy Oaks Villa is tough to say. The tongue trips over going from the the S at the end of ‘oak’ to the V at the start of ‘villa’. Say it over a couple of times to yourself. Breezy Oak Villa is much easier to say than Breezy Oaks Villa. That little hiccup may not matter to you much, but if you have to say the phrase thousands of times a year like I do, it becomes very important!

Third, by eliminating the ‘S’ at the end of the word ‘Oak’ it helps differentiate the name from all of the other ‘Breezy Oak’ whatever’s that exist out there on the internet. Be it Breezy Oaks RV Park, Breezy Oaks Retirement Castle, Breezy Oaks Salsa… Oh, I don’t know! But they’re there! Anyway, Breezy Oak comes alphabetically before Breezy Oaks – a space beats any letter or number alphabetically – so with no S on the end, Breezy Oak Villas comes before everything else named Breezy Oaks in search results! Take that Google!

It’s like those old companies that used to call themselves AAAAAAAA Plumbing just to get first position in the old phonebook yellow pages, but much smarter and with much more class!

Fourth, right from the beginning, we knew it would be Breezy Oak Villa that was our first property, but that there would eventually be others, all operating under the umbrella name of Breezy Oak VillaS! And it only took three years before we had our second property; Pleasant Oak Villa. Breezy Oak VillaS is also easier on the tongue than Breezy Oaks Villas, so that was one of the final nails in the coffin for the S on the word Oak. I registered the domain BreezyOakVillas.com when we first got started, so I wouldn’t have to change it later. Always big plans, right?

All of our villas are located in the subdivision of Thousand Oaks, Polk County Florida, so tying in the name to the Oak theme was a natural choice. Plus, there are lots of Oak trees in the area!

So there you have it! Why it is Breezy Oak, and NOT Breezy Oaks! No matter how much it drives me crazy, I don’t inflict the issue upon my guests, and I never correct them on it. Except in one place. If I am posting a guest’s review somewhere and they referred to us or the villa as Breezy OakS, then I will correct the name to remove the S. Having great reviews posted for a property with a different name really isn’t that helpful, so it is one concession to my policy of not bothering guests about the name. And even then, I don’t say anything or let the guest know; I just silently make the correction.

We have a list of additional ‘oak’ names waiting for more properties to be added to the line. All I can say about that at this point is… we’re working on it! 🙂